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Near the Knuckle

How Evolutionary Logic Helps Explain Irish Traveller Bare-Knuckle Contests

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Abstract

Irish Travellers constitute a pre-demographic-shift population living among a post-demographic-shift one. Their socio-medico profile identifies them as largely on fast life-history trajectories. In addition, they are strongly religious (typically using no contraception), highly sexually behaviorally dimorphic, with strong traditions of male-male competition (bare-knuckle fighting) and quasi-symbolic bride capture (“grabbing”). Their male-male competitions thus allow for the comparative testing of a number of interesting theories pertaining to the nature and function of types of violence in society. As a pilot study, we used expert raters (some naive to the hypotheses) to analyze a number of real-life bare-knuckle competitions in terms of the support said spectacles offered to theories of this sort of violence as reinforcing ideas of antisociality, hierarchical promotion, intersexual signaling, or maintenance of within-group equality. We found good evidence to support theories of within-group, prosocial hierarchical functions for these contests. Limitations and implications for future research, such as direct measurement of fitness, are discussed.

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Notes

  1. “Traveller” is the preferred term today; the name “gypsy” often being seen as insulting. However, Gorman referred to himself this way, and all references to him in literature and film are to “gypsy” rather than “Traveller.” Note that “Traveller” (rather than “Traveler”) is the preferred Irish spelling.

  2. The intended meaning may have been that neither was fit enough to continue; we have quoted directly from the response.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank John Dempsey of Gallway for expert consultancy on the variety and validity of Traveller fight “call-outs,” the expert raters, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on a draft version of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Applied Psychology, UCC, Cork, Ireland

    Robert King & Caoilfhionn O’Riordan

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  1. Robert King
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  2. Caoilfhionn O’Riordan
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Correspondence to Robert King.

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King, R., O’Riordan, C. Near the Knuckle. Hum Nat 30, 272–298 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-019-09351-7

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